Cliff Hanging
by Dukes126plus
Summary: It would have been beneficial, however, if he’d been apprised of the rules of this game up front. From The Late J.D. Hogg.


This one's from _The Late J.D. Hogg_. It rides along on the tracks laid by the episode, up until the boys blow a tire while chasing after the antagonists-of-the-week.

* * *

"You gonna tailgate 'em or you gonna catch 'em?" That was good old Luke, always the first to generously point out that Bo wasn't pulling his share of the weight. As if Luke was doing anything more helpful than running his foul mouth.

"I just got here, I ain't made up my mind yet." That there was a thing of beauty, the near silence to his right, just the percussion of air like Luke was planning on coming out the cleverest thing in the world, except Bo had already done it so there was nothing more to say. Could see without looking that exasperated half-smirk on Luke's face, the one that pulled up in his cheek without him even wanting it to. Face muscles admitting what Luke's tongue never would: _you got me, Bo_.

Pings and cracks, and the game changed faster than a traffic signal. Everyday car chase instantly became a shooting gallery, with him and Luke in starring roles as the sitting ducks. "They ain't supposed to do that!" Simple as kids playing hide-and-seek, that was how it was supposed to go. Bad guys ran, Bo outdrove them, forced them into a convenient ditch or tree. Luke outfought them, bent them over the hood of their accordioned car, and Rosco showed up, kheeing about cuffing and stuffing and ten ordinary sheriffs being dead by now.

Luke was under the dashboard, not scared of a silly little bullet or two. "Keep it on the road, Bo." Sure, that meant Bo had to see the road, his neon sign of a blonde head just attracting bullets. And then there was poor Luke, who must be lonely under that dashboard all by himself.

Another heartbeat (and Bo could feel every single one of them, both his and Luke's) and the game changed again. _Open ditch_, the sign said. _Road closed_. "We got 'em now," he informed his cousin, who was miraculously upright again, now that bullets had stopped flying. _Road closed_, damn – how he loved those words. Might as well change them to _Bo Duke's playground_.

It would have been beneficial, however, if he'd been apprised of the rules of this game up front. Must be too early in the day or something (his thick tongue had tried to explain that concept to Luke only a couple of hours ago, _too early to get up_, and Luke had laughed and stolen his covers anyway, something about chores and tanned hides, but look where it led. If they were up too early in the morning they had to run around in circles that much longer before catching the bad guys in mid-afternoon) and the Dukes weren't allowed to win yet. The General reminded him of this little fact by blowing a tire.

Luke was so helpful there next to him, grabbing the dashboard and looking scared. Finally they skidded to an axle breaking stop, one wheel over the edge of the ditch, which was really much more of a looming cliff than anything so manageable as a ditch.

"Dang it!" Oh, sure, now Luke was taking action, sliding up onto the frame of his window and smacking his hand on the rebel flag overhead with a mighty thunk. Bo was too busy just breathing to care about the little temper tantrum going on up there.

"You okay?" Like an afterthought. Or maybe not, Luke was back in the car with him, worried eyes (_so blue_, same color they'd been all of Bo's life, but damn, he'd never really seen them before; if he had, he would never have been able to look away) searching his face.

No words, or they were all stuck somewhere in his chest, some kind of traffic jam of verbs racing to beat the nouns, and none of them could get through, so he just nodded.

Luke was gone again, and Bo's words were back, "Breaker one for Crazy Cooter, you read me?" Knew, instinctively (or maybe just from the thud that happened there at the end of the slip-sliding skid) that there would be no getting rolling again without a wrecker.

Rescue call made, he scrambled over to Luke's side of the car and out the passenger window. It was a longer drop from his side than he wanted to think about. Sat down in the dust about three steps away, and watched Luke work. Shoving against the roll bar, trying to push the car back and get all four wheels on solid ground, and it was a waste of time, but Luke needed to do it. Sitting still and waiting for help was against his religion (and it was hard to believe that he and Bo grew up in the same church). All the brains in the world couldn't make Luke be logical about failure. There was no way to push the car that way; therefore Luke would exhaust himself trying.

"You gonna just sit there or are you gonna do some honest work?" It was a grunt as much as anything, Luke digging slick boot soles into loose dirt, arms and shoulders knotted with the effort the push the car away from the cliff's edge.

The question made as much sense as Rosco-babble; it was exactly the kind of thing that was best ignored. "Luke," he said instead. "Boss is gonna die."

The struggle between man, car and gravity came to a halt, just like that. Luke kicked a rock, not at him or it would have hit instead of rolling harmlessly off to Bo's right.

"I guess." It was better than it could have been, seemed like Luke had pinned him to the ground and stuck a hand over his mouth with a dangerously quiet _shut up Bo, _back when he'd said just about those same words about Aunt Lavinia. His cousin hadn't really changed all that much since then.

"At least he knows." Probably shouldn't have said that part either. Just look at how hard Luke was staring at him now, and had those eyes been magnetic only a few minutes ago? Now he was scorned by them, same as he had been all his life. Shoot, pissing Luke off was easier than breathing, most days. "Well, I'd want to." In his own defense.

"Why in hell would you want to know that you only had two weeks to live?"

Bo reached out a hand; Luke took it out of habit, sweaty grip and all that balance changing, pulling him towards standing. Got a heel under himself for leverage and Bo waited, watched, and – there – the moment when his cousin's weight was too far gone to fight against the tug. Luke crashed back into him then, and off into the dirt at his side, leaving only the pain along Bo's ribcage as a souvenir.

"Sit with me," Bo coughed out around the lack of oxygen Luke's body had left behind. Oh, that was a filthy look Luke gave him for that, so squinted down that there was almost no blue to it at all. "Awhile."

Silence. His cousin was not participating. He'd been tricked and not nicely. Then again, he wasn't exactly storming off, either.

"I'd want to know," Bo started because someone had to. Cars careened spectacularly off cliffsides and bridges on a daily basis in these parts. Cooter had just about yawned at the notion that his inconsiderate friends had disabled their car where there was no road (and since when was Cooter so mature? Seemed like he'd wrecked enough cars, most of them not even his, within fairly recent memory), said he'd be there after he got done hauling some fine city girl's car out of the sticky mud at the edge of Black Hollow Pond. It'd be awhile. "Because there's things I'd want to do if, you know, I wasn't going to be around anymore."

Luke was laughing at him, not with his mouth, but with those eyes. "Shoot," he said. "I don't reckon there's anything you want to do that you don't just," elbow balanced on his bent knee, Luke's hand cut the air in front of him in half, quick horizontal slice. "Do." _Because you're a spoiled brat that always gets what he wants, because you're an idiot that never thinks, because you assume I'll always be there to bail you out…_

"I reckon there is," Bo snapped, turning to shove a hand against Luke's shoulder, so close to him that he could almost claim it as his own. "I reckon," and he was already breathing heavily, getting his knees under him for leverage, fingers digging into bone or muscle (couldn't tell which on Luke, everything about his cousin was hard, except those soft blue eyes), and pushing Luke down. "You don't know everything."

A smirk. Luke was baiting him even as he yielded for the moment, let Bo shove at him until he was on his back, kept up the illusion that Bo could pin him when they both knew that all the sleight of hand in the world couldn't stand up to the stalwart resistance of Luke Duke.

There it came, the smirk changing, mouth opening and Luke was going to ask, lips pursing down for the word. Bo let him get halfway there. "Wha—" and by then he was too close for seeing, just exactly close enough for feeling, hot breath, soft lips, wet tongue. Seconds of nothing both those sensations and the hard fingers digging through the thin cotton on Bo's shoulders, only the one shirt today, too hot for layers, meant the feeling of Luke was right there, only a threadbare bit of cloth away. Fingers digging in, not pushing or pulling, just waiting as Bo pulled back, not away exactly, just far enough to lose himself in the concentrated blue of Luke's eyes.


End file.
